Pain and Betrayal
by Touch of Venom
Summary: The war is over and Narcissa is left to mourn for everything that could have been, but what was never supposed to be.


**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry: Assignment #2 - Muggle Studies: write a tragic story about forbidden love**

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Your skin is as cold as ice and hard as stone, so different from the soft pliancy I was used to from trailing my fingers across your skin or digging my nails into your flesh. Your lips which were once a glinting mocking crimson were now tinged blue. It was so strange to see you without your lipstick or the cruel twist of your lips.

Beauty still lingered in your features even in death. Years in Azkaban had been unable to steal your beauty though it had begun to corrode away. It had been painful when I first laid eyes on you once you had been freed from Azkaban. You had looked so different from how I remembered. The worst part was how weak and starved you were. You never used to accept help of pity from anyone but when you had first arrived, you had no choice but accept my help even if it killed you to do so.

It hurt us both that you barely resembled the witch I had fallen in love with.

I am glad that even in your more spiteful moments that you never saw fit to tell me what you thought of who I had become.

Things between us had changed once again after your escape. You no longer bothered with midnight rendezvous to meet up. Your grip once protective and loving had changed to possessive and painful. Even when we were alone with only sheets for company your lips never lost their cruel twist. Instead of loving promises to protect and support me, you began to taunt and humiliate me.

I thought I had lost you once years ago when fate and betrayal saw fit to separate us from one another. I hadn't lost you than, not completely but the process had begun. It was that separation, that betrayal that had set us on the path that had brought us here.

Tears slid down my face silent as the falling snow. Tears were a sign of weakness that is what our parents had taught. I lived by that rule never shedding a tear when we were separated, or when you joining the Dark Lord. I had not cried when you had been sentenced to Azkaban or when you had escaped. Over the last few months you had tried to get me to break, with your words and your actions in our bed chamber, you had tried to make me cry. I can see now that you had been trying to push me away, to save me from the pain that I felt now.

For you, for your death, I could allow myself this one sign of weakness.

Only you and I will ever know the tears I shed are for the life I wished we could have lead. I once wished for a life where the expectations and restrictions of others had not kept us apart, and where we could have been free to be happy in each other's arms. You had once promised to protect me from the world, to keep me safe. Even as a love struck teen I had never been foolish enough to believe the promises you made, yet your arms were the only place I have ever felt like I truly belonged. It was painful knowing that what had been between us was never meant to be.

Warmth enveloped my shoulder just enough to catch my attention. As soon as I registered there was a hand resting on me it was gone. A face so similar to Bella's and yet so different filled the corner of my eye. Andromeda.

Hurt and pain erupted inside of me, a maelstrom battling against my self-control. Andy knew better than to approach me, or to come near you, Bella. Though it appeared she had no fear of the dead, and in that moment I felt as if I were as dead as you.

Silence filled the air between the three of us. It had been years since we had all been together, and so much had changed since the last time we had been inside these walls as sisters. Memories of the youth we had shared, the bond that had once existed between us, filled my mind.

I saw once more the wicked gleam that once filled your eyes when you were planning something nasty for the Gryffindors. I could hear Andy's exasperated tone when she would lecture you about doing your homework, or actually going to class. The scent of the abandon classroom we used to meet one another in the farthest corner of the dungeons. The taste of your lips, coated in Firewhiskey after you had one the Quidditch Cup your seventh year.

The memories were painful and oddly soothing against the shredded remainders of my heart. I hated to admit it but in this moment I did not completely despise Andy, the sister who had betrayed us so. If only for the memories her presence brought to mind.

The war was over and the Dark Lord was gone for good. I had even played a part in ending things in favor of the Order. Things in our society would change and the blatant discrimination that had permeated the Wizarding World for the last seventeen years would begin to change.

The world we lived in would change but things would never change between Andy and I, it wasn't possible after everything that had happened. It was her fault after all that things had turned out this way. I would accept her presence for she also mourned what could have been but that was all. Perhaps if Andy had made different choices back than you wouldn't be lying here now Bella.

She had promised not to say a word when she had walked in on us together entangled in the sheets of your bed, your lips attached to mine. She had sworn to keep her silence, and as we kept her own secrets neither of us doubted her. We never should have trusted her with what had lain between us.

I will never say that she deserved the pain she felt with the death of her daughter; I know that no mother deserves to feel that pain. You I know would have seen things differently, once you had lost your mind you had become obsessed with taking everything from Andy as she had taken everything from us.

The night our parents had announced your betrothal to Rodolphus Lestrange and mine to Lucius, we knew that they had learned our secret. Andy standing guilty next to them was the only confirmation we needed to know it had been her who had outed us. Sisters' sleeping together was far too depraved even for members of the Black family. I always doubted our parents would have cared if only one of us had been a boy.

All three of us had our secrets told that night. Bella, my dear sweet Bella, you had wasted no time demanding our parents if Andy was also to be sold into a betrothal or if they were fine with her marrying the mudblood filth she was currently sleeping with.

That had been the last time we had seen Andy and the last night we had been together as free women. Our parents had kept us apart after that night, until we had both been bound to others. It had been than that what hold you had on your sanity had begun to shatter. The heavy use of Dark Magic that had begun after that slowly began to eat away at the rest. Neither your disgust and enmity with Rodolphus or your obsession with the Dark Lord had helped.

Looking back now it is easy to see that what was between us had been bound to fail from the start. Standing here next to your body, it is not just my lover that I mourn but also my sister. Who you were and who we had been long before we had succumbed to our darkest desires for one another.

"I'm sorry," Andy offered though her voice was emotionless. She wasn't sorry and we both knew it. She would have apologized years ago if she truly regretted what had happened that night. She also could never regret your death as you had taken her daughter from her. The words were empty and hollow.

I finally turned to look at Andy after all these years. Life, or maybe war, had not been easy on her either. Wrinkles and worry lines filled her face. Her eyes lacked the warmth and goodness that I recalled from our youth. Her voice was as hollow as her words. She finally looked like someone who belonged to the Black family. Eyes that had seen things the owners never should have had to witness. A mind filled with knowledge that was better left forgotten in books older than the castle.

Things between us would never change but at least when I walked out of this castle I would do so with my family at my side. Andromeda would be alone, without her husband, without her daughter, and without her sisters. Her emptiness would be our fault, mine only by an extension of yours. You were the one who had killed her daughter, and through your Lord her husband was dead.

My tears finally came to an end as I focused on Andy's heavy gaze. Her brown haunted gaze, so different from your passionate and later insane black gaze. Andy had seen her share of hardship and pain. A bond of sisterhood, love and blood, had once been between us. Now it was pain and betrayal that tied us together, her actions and my inactions.

"Apologies are weakness," I finally answered. It was an old adage our parents had taught us once upon a time when we were but girls. They had taught us many lessons about life. Some had been more false than others. I would agree though that tears and apologies were certainly a weakness.

"So are tears," Andy returned. "She would hate to be cried over."

I bit down on my tongue and the taste of blood filled my mouth. I did not let up until the urge to demand what it was Andy would possible know about you, Bella, disappeared. She was right of course, but that hardly matter. She had no right to be making any statements regarding what it was you would or would not have wanted.

"Why are you here, Andy?" I asked.

"Closure," Andy answered.

Closure, was something she would not find here. There was no closure for any of us. Bella, you would never get the chance to truly exist that chance had been lost the moment you had pledged your loyalty to the Dark Lord. I would never have the chance to try and heal the harm Azkaban had done to you. Andy would never be able to pay you pack all the pain you had caused her.

"If you ever find it, be a dear and let me know?" I told her. Andy's eyes widened and I didn't bother to hold back my smirk as she would know it was there anyway. Nothing else was said as I turned and walked back across the Great Hall towards were my husband and son sat waiting for me. My heart felt as if it was slowly being torn from my chest with each step, it of course refused to leave your side, my dear sweet Bella.


End file.
